F 

'Bjls 



**£ 






THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN; 

WITH A GENERAL FISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE DIVISION OF THE 
NORTHWEST TERRITORY INTO STATES. 

ILLUSTRATED BY ELEVEN MAPS. 



By REUBEN G. THWAITES, 

Secretary State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 



[REPRINTED FROM VOL. XL. WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.] 




Class. F ^%7 ^ 
Book^- 9 / ^ 



THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN; 

WITH A GENERAL HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE DIVISION OF THE 
NORTHWEST TERRITORY INTO STATES. 

ILLUSTRATED BY ELEVEN MAPS. 



By REUBEN G. THWAITES. 

u 

Secretary State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 



[REPRINTED FROM VOL. XL, WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.] 



IN EXCHANGE 
W«. Hiat, Sec 






THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 



BY THE EDITOR. 



Wisconsin having been the fifth and last commonwealth 
formed out of the old Northwest Territory, and obliged to con- 
tent herself with the remains after the dowries of her four 
older sisters had been apportioned out of the family estate, 
an adequate study of her boundaries involves a general his- 
torical survey of the division of that Territory into states. 

Washington, " first in war, first in peace, and first in the 
hearts of his countrymen," was first, too, in making sugges- 
tions as to the boundary lines of Northwestern states. 
September 7, 1783, we find him writing to James Duane, 
then a member of congress from New York, regarding the 
future of the country beyond the Ohio. 1 After giving some 
wise suggestions as to the management of both Indians and 
whites, in the vast region northwest of the river Ohio, he de- 
clares that the time is ripe for the blocking out of a state 
there. Here are the bounds proposed by the veteran sur- 
veyor: "From the mouth of the Great Miami river, which 
empties into the Ohio, to its coufluence with the Mad river, 
thence by a line to the Miami fort and village on the other 
Miami river, which empties into Lake Erie, and thence by 
a line to include the settlement of Detroit, would, with Lake 
Erie to the northward, Pennsylvania to the eastward and the 
Ohio to the southward, form a government sufficiently ex- 
tensive to fulfill all the public engagements, and to receive 
moreover a large population by emigrants." He contin- 
ues: '• Were it not for the purpose of comprehending the 
settlement of Detroit within the jurisdiction of the new 
government, a more compact and better shaped district for 
a state would be, for the line to proceed from the Miami 

^parks'a Life and Writings of Washington, viii., p. 477. 



452 



WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 



fort and village along the river of that name, to Lake Erie; 
leaving in that case the settlement of Detroit, and all the 
territory north of the rivers Miami and St. Joseph's between 
the Lakes Erie, St. Clair, Huron, and Michigan, to form here- 
after another state equally large, compact, and water- 
bounded." 

Thus did Washington, with that clear-headedness and 
far sightedness which caused him, in practical matters like 
this, to outrank most Americans of his day, roughly map 

out the present 
states of Ohio and 
Michigan; and, five 
weeks later, on the 
15th of October, 
1783, congress 
adopted this second 
suggestion almost 
literally, in estab- 
lishing a region for 
colonization north 
of the Ohio, into 
which no red man 
was thereafter to be 
allowed a foothold — 
if the law could 
stop him. 1 




JEFTERSOPfS PLAN,I7BV-. 



Early in March, 1781, congress instructed a committee of 
which Thomas Jefferson was chairman, to fashion a plan 
of government for the entire Northwest, — or, as it was 
then called, the Western Territory, — which had now become 
public domain through the surrender of the land claims of 
those states which had stoutly held that they owned every- 
thing west of their coast lines, as far as the Pacific ocean.* 
To Jefferson is to be given the credit for drafting the report 
of this committee, which was first taken up by congress on 
the 19th of April, and adopted on the 2*rd, after some 

1 Secret Journals of Congress, i., p. 258. Duane was chairman of the 
committee reporting these resolutions. 

2 Randall's Life of Jefferson, i., p. 397. 



1784.] 



THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 



453 



amendment. The original draft J has come down to us in 
history, famous, among other features, for Jefferson's fantas- 
tic proposition to divide the Northwest, on parallels of lati- 
tude, into ten states with severely classical names: Sylvania, 
Michigania, Assenisipia, Illinoia, Polypotamia, Chersonesus, 
Mesopotamia, Saratoga, Pelisipia and Washington. While 
congress practically accepted his system of territorial divis- 
ion, his proposed names were rejected, and each section was 
left to choose its own title when it should enter the lists of 
the union. 3 

These resolutions 
of April 23, 1784, 
were in force until 
July 13, 1787, when 
the congress of the 
confederation, in 
session at Philadel 
phia, adopted " an 
ordinance for the 
government of the 
territory of the 
United States north- 
west of the river 
Ohio." What now 
became familiarly 
known as the North- 
west Territory lay 
west of Pennsylvania and north and west of the Ohio river; 
its western limit was the Mississippi river, which had been 
established by the treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763, as the 
boundary between the British possessions and the French 
province of Louisiana, and confirmed as the western 
boundary of the United States by our treaty with Great 
Britain, September 3, 1783; the northern limit was the line 
between British America and the United States. The land 



vmj 






n. 


ys/yyyyyyyVk 


0RDMAHCE°'1787. 



1 The draught of the committee's report, in the handwriting of Jefferson, 
may still be seen at Washington, in the archives of the department of 
state. 

- See ante, p. 61, for full text of the resolutions, as adopted. 



454 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

embraced in this great tract was, in great part, the Virginia 
cession, made in 1784; to the north of that lay the strip 
ceded by Connecticut in 1786 and 1800; farther north, the 
Massachusetts cession of 1785; while the territory north of 
latitude 43° 43' 12" had been acquired from Great Britain in 
1783. 1 

Article V. of the ordinance was as follows : " There shall be 
formed in the said territory not less than three nor more than 
five states; and the boundaries of the states, as soon as Vir- 
ginia shall alter her act of cession and consent to the same, 2 
shall become fixed and established as follows, to-wit: The 
western state, in the said territory, shall be bounded by the 
Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Wabash rivers; a direct line 
drawn from the Wabash and Post Vincents [Vincennes, In- 
diana], due north, to the territorial line between the United 
States and Canada; and by the said territorial line to the 
Lake of the Woods and Mississippi. The middle state shall 
be bounded by the said direct line, the Wabash from Post Vin- 
cents to the Ohio, by the Ohio, by a direct line drawn due north 
from the mouth of the Great Miami to the said territorial line, 
and by the said territorial line. The eastern state shall be 
bounded by the last-mentioned direct line, the Ohio, Pennsyl- 
vania, and the said territorial line: Provided, hoiuever, And 
it is further understood and declared, that the boundaries of 
these three states shall be subject so far to be altered, that, 
if congress shall hereafter find it expedient, they shall have 
authority to form one or two states in that part of the said 
territory which lies north of an east and ivest line drawn 
through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan. 
And whenever any of the said states shall have sixty 
thousand free inhabitants therein, such state shall be ad- 
mitted, by its delegates, into the congress of the United 
States, on an equal footing with the original states, in all 
respects whatever." 

In order to give the ordinance an air of stability, it was 
solemnly provided, in section 14 of the preamble, that: 
" The following articles shall be considered as articles of 

1 See map in McMaster's Hist. People U. S., ii. 
2 Wkichshedid in 1788. 



1S00.] 



THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 



455 



compact, between the original states and the people and 
states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, 
unless by common consent." 

Twelve years afterward ' the congress of the United 
States, which had succeeded the congress of the confeder- 
ation, made its first division of the Northwest Territory. 3 
The act provided: "That from and after the fourth day of 
July next, all that part of the territory of the United States 
northwest of the 
Ohio river which 
lies to the westward 
of a line beginning 
at the Ohio, oppo- 
site to the mouth of 
Kentucky river, and 
running thence to 
Fort Recovery 
[near the present 
Greenville, Ohio], 
and thence north 
until it shall inter- 
sect the territorial 
line between the 
United States and 
Canada, shall, for 
the purposes of temporary government, constitute a separate 
territory, and be called the Indiana Territory." The country 
east of this line was still to be called the Northwest Terri- 
tory, with its seat of government at Chillicothe; while Vin- 
cennes was to be the seat of government for Indiana Terri- 
tory. That portion of the line running from the point on 
the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Kentucky, northeast- 
ward to Fort Recovery, was designed to be but a temporary 
boundary, it being one of the lines established between the 




1 Act approved May 7, 1800. The ordinance itself had been confirmed by 
act of congress, approved August 7, 1789. 

2 See St. Clair's letter to Harrison, on the division of the Northwest Ter- 
ritory, St. Clair Papers, ii., pp. 489,490. 



456 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. 33. 

white settlements and the Indians, by the treaty of Green- 
ville, July 30, 1795. 

The act of congress approved April 30, 1802, enabling 
"the people of the eastern division " of the Northwest Ter- 
ritory, — Ohio, — to draft a state constitution, obliged them 
to take in their northern boundary and accept therefor 
" an east and west line drawn through the southerly ex- 
treme of Lake Michigan," in accordance with the limits 
prescribed by the original ordinance. In the state constitu- 
tional convention, held at Chillicothe in November that 
year, this line had been acceded to in committee without a 
murmur, when suddenly it came to the ears of the members 
that an experienced trapper, then in the village, claimed for 
Lake Michigan a more southerly head than had been popu- 
larly given it. It appears that in the department of state, 
at Washington, there was a map bearing date 1755, pub- 
lished by Mitchell, which placed the southern bend of Lake 
Michigan at 42° 20'. This map had been in use by the com- 
mittee of congress which drafted the ordinance of 1787, and 
a pencil line was discovered upon it, evidently made by a 
committee-man, which passed due east from the bend and 
intersected the international line at a point between the 
river Raisin and Detroit. 1 The Chillicothe convention had 
become alarmed at the trapper's report of the incorrectness 
of Mitchell's map, and made haste to attach a proviso to 
the boundary article, as follows: 

" Provided always, and it is hereby fully understood 
and declared by this convention. That if the southerly bend 
or extreme of Lake Michigan should extend so far south, 
that a line drawn due east from it should not intersect 
Lake Erie, or if it should intersect the said Lake Erie 
east of the mouth of the Miami river of the lake, then, and 
in that case, with the assent of the congress of the United 
States, the northern boundary of this state shall be estab- 

1 Burnet's Notes on Northwest Territory (1847), p. 360. But it is singular 
that the committee did not use a later and more reliable map than this, — 
one published in 1778, nine years before the passage of the ordinance, — 
by Thomas Hutchins. Hut chins placed the southern bend about where 
it was afterwards proved to be by Talcott's survey — 41° 37' 07.9". 



1803-05.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 



457 



lished by, and extending to, a direct line, running from the 
southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the most northerly 
cape of the Miami bay," etc. 

"The eastern division " of the Northwest Territory, now 
organized under the name of the state of Ohio, was form- 
ally admitted as such to the Union, by act approved Febru- 
ary" 19, 1803; nothing being said in the recognition act rela- 
tive to the boundary, it was taken for granted by the Ohio 
people that the proviso was accepted. 

On the 11th of January, 1805, an act of congress was 
approved, erecting the territory of Michigan out of ic all 
that part of the 
Indiana Territory 
which lies north 
of a line drawn 
east from the 
southerly bend, or 
extreme, of Lake 
Michigan, until 
it shall intersect 
Lake Erie, and 
east of a line 
drawn from the 
said southerly 
bend through the 
middle of said 
lake to its north- 
ern extremity, 
and thence due north to the northern boundary of the United 
States." In short, the present southern peninsula of Michigan 
with a southern boundary as established by the ordinance 
of 1787, and all that portion of the upper peninsula lying east 
of the meridian of Mackinaw. Congress had admitted Ohio 
to the Union with a tacit recognition of the northern bound- 
ary laid down in her constitutional proviso, yet so little 
thought had been given to the matter, and geographical 
knowledge of the West was still so vague, that this circum- 
stance had been overlooked, and Michigan Territory was al- 
lowed a southern limit which, though in strict accordance 




458 



WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 



with the ordinance, seriously overlapped the territory as- 
signed to Ohio. Thus, in later years, when it became known 
where the southerly bead of Lake Michigan really was, a 
serious boundary dispute arose, Michigan claiming the or- 
dinance as a compact which could not be broken by con- 
gress without common consent, while Ohio tenaciously 
clung to the strip of country which the constitution-makers 
at Chillicothe had secured for her in the eleventh hour. 
The wedge-shaped strip in dispute averaged six miles in 
width, across Ohio, embraced some four hundred and sixty- 
eight square miles, and included the lake-port of Toledo 
and the mouth of the Maumee river, the possession of which 

was deemed well 
worth quarreling 
over. May 2 0, 
1812, congress 
passed an act for 
determining the 
boundary, but 
owing to trouble 
with Great Brit- 
ain, the lines were 
not run until 1818, 
and then not sat- 
isfactorily. July 
14, 1832, another 
act of congress 
for the settlement 
JAN. 11,1805. of the northern 




limit of Ohio was passed, and as a result of extensive obser- 
vations by Captain A. Talcott of the United States engineer 
corps, that officer was able to report in detail, in January, 
1834, and again in November, 1835. ' That report shows that 
the southern bend of Lake Michigan is in latitude 41° 37' 
07.9", while the north capa of Maumee bay is in 41° 44' 02.4". 
Michigan had begun in 1831 to urge her claims to state- 
hood, insisting on the southern boundary prescribed for the 



1 Senate Docs., No. 1, 24th Cong., 1st sess., vol. i., p. 203. 



1835-36.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 459 

fourth and fifth states by the ordinance; and Virginia, 
whose consent, as the chief land-giver, had been deemed 
necessary to the legalizing of that document, was impor- 
tuned by Governor Mason to intercede in behalf of the 
peninsula Territory. But, although the officials of the 
Old Dominion were in accord with the movement, it failed 
to produce any effect on congress, for the political sympathy 
of the actual state of Ohio was more important to the 
dominant party, just then, than the possible good- will of the 
projected state of Michigan. Without waiting for an en- 
abling act, a convention held at Detroit in May and June, 
1835, adopted a state constitution for submission to congress, 
demanding entry into the Union, "in conformity to the 
fifth article of the ordinance" of 1787 — of course the 
boundaries sought being those established by the article 
in question. That summer, there were popular disturb- 
ances in the disputed territory, and some gunpowder harm- 
lessly wasted. In December, President Jackson laid the mat- 
ter before congress in a special message. Congress quietly 
determined to " arbitrate " the quarrel by giving to Ohio 
the disputed tract, and offering Michigan, 1 by way of partial 
recompense, the whole of what is to day her upper penin- 
sula. Michigan did not want the supposedly barren and 
worthless country to her northwest, protested long and loud 
against what she deemed to be an outrage, declared that 
she had no community of interest with the north peninsula, 
and was separated from it by insurmountable natural bar- 
riers for one-half of the year, while it rightfully belonged to 
the fifth state, to be formed out of the Northwest Territory. 
But congress persisted in making this settlement of the 
quarrel one of the conditions precedent to the admission of 
Michigan into the Union. In September, 1836, a state con- 
vention, called for the sole purpose of deciding the question, 
rejected the proposition on the ground that congress had no 
right to annex such a condition, according to the terms of 
the ordinance; a second convention, however, approved of 
it on the 15th of December following, and congress at 

1 Act approved June 15, 1836. 



460 



WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 



once accepted this decision as final. 1 Thus Michigan came 
into the sisterhood of states, January 26, 1837, with the terri- 
torial limits which she possesses to-day.* 

The erection of Michigan Territory in 1805 had left Indi- 
ana Territory with the Mississippi river as its western bor- 
der, the Ohio as its southern, the international boundary 
and the south line of Michigan as its northern, while its 
eastern limits were the west line of Ohio, the middle of Lake 
Michigan and the meridian of Mackinaw. This included 
the present states of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and the 
greater part of the Michigan upper peninsula. 

The next division was ordained by act of congress, ap- 
proved February 3, 1809, when that portion of Indiaua Ter- 
ritory lying west of the lower Wabash river and the merid- 
ian of Vincennes 
was erected into 
the Territory of 
Illinois. Indiana 
was thus left with 
her present 
boundaries, ex- 
cept that on the 
south side she 
owned a funnel- 
shaped strip of 
water and of land 
just west of the 
middle of Lake 
Michigan, be- 
tween the Vin- 
cennes meridian 




chenrui tiss tfiwp 



FEB. 3, 1809. 



and the then western boundary of Michigan Territory, — 
what is now, roughly speaking, the county of Door, in Wis- 
consin, together with the counties of Delta, Alger and 



'Hough's Amer. Const, i., p. 663. 

J The arguments on the Ohio-Michigan claims will be found at length in 
Senate Docs., No. 211, vol. iii., 1835-36, and Reports of Corns., No. 380, vol. 
ii., 1835-36. 



1816-18.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN^ 



46 L 



Schoolcraft and the greater part of Chippewa and Macki- 
nac, in Michigan. 

When Indiana was admitted to the Union, by act ap- 
proved April 19, 1816, her northern boundary was estab- 
lished by congress on a line running due east of a point in 
the middle of Lake Michigan ten miles north of the southern 
extreme of the lake. This was a flagrant violation of the 
great ordinance, but the excuse was that Indiana must be 
given a share of the lake coast, and as there were then no 
important harbors or towns involved, Michigan never made 
any serious objection to this particular encroachment on 
her territory. 

The contraction of the northern bounds of Indiana, how- 
ever, left the before-mentioned strip of water in Lake Michi- 
gan and the generous belt of peninsula country to the north, 
wholly out in the cold. It was literally " ISTo Man's Land." 
States and territories had been formed around it, but these 
semi insulated sec- 
tions of ore and pine 
lands were claimed 
by none, such was 
the prevalent igno- 
rance of the actual 
condition, situation 
and extent of the 
public domain in the 
far Northwest. 

The act of April 
18, 1818, enabling 
Illinois to become a 
state, cut down her 
territory to its pres- 
ent limits, and gave 
to Michigan "all 




OltPHJIO TUmtWI 



APRIL IB, 1818. 



that part of the territory of the United States lying a.x'tn of 
the state of Indiana, and which was included in the former 
Indiana Territory, together with that part of the Illinois Ter- 
ritory which is situated north of and not included within the 
boundaries prescribed by this act." Thus was what we may 



462 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

call No Man's Land, and all of the Northwest Territory west 
of it, taken in "for temporary purposes only" under the 
wing of Michigan Territory, which now embraced all the 
country between the Mississippi river and Lakes Erie, St. 
Clair and Huron, and north of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. 
The northern boundary of Illinois was fixed at 42° 30', 
which is over sixty-one miles north of the southern bend of 
Lake Michigan, the southern boundary prescribed by the 
ordinance for the fourth and fifth states to be formed out of 
the old Northwest Territory. Thus were the express terms 
of the ordinance, which had been declared to be " forever 
unalterable except by common consent," again violated, 
without so much as saying " by your leave " to the people 
west of Lake Michigan who lived north of 42° 30'. What 
was afterwards Wisconsin was thereby robbed of eight 
thousand five hundred square miles of rich agricultural 
and mining country and numerous lake-ports, through the 
shrewd manipulation of Nathaniel Pope, Illinois's delegate in 
congress at that time. Pope speciously argued that Illinois 
must become intimately connected with the growing com- 
merce of the northern lakes, or else she would be led, from 
her commercial relations upon the great rivers trending to 
the south, to join a southern confederacy in case the Union 
were disrupted. 1 

An act of congress approved June 28, 1834, added to the 
Territory of Michigan, "for temporary purposes," the lands 
lying north of the state of Missouri and between the Mis- 
sissippi river on the east and the Missouri and White Earth * 
rivers on the west, which had been acquired from France 
as a part of the Louisiana purchase, in 1S03. 3 Michigan 

1 Annals of Congress, 1818, vol. ii., p. 1677; Ford's Hist, of III, p. 22; 
Davidson and Struve's Hist, of III, p. 295. 

2 A small northern tributary of the Missouri, having its source some 
thirty miles south of the international boundary; it empcies into the Mis- 
souri near the western boundary of Mountraille county, Dakota, about 
eighty-five miles west of the meridian of Bismarck. 

3 The clause of this act relating to area is as follows: " All that part 
of the territory of the United States bounded on the east by the Mississippi 
river, on the south bv the state of Missouri and a line drawn due west 
from the northwest corner of said state [then on the meridian of Kansas 



1824.] 



THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 



463 



Territory now extended, therefore, from Detroit westward 
to eighty-five miles northwest of the site of the present city 
of Bismarck, Dakota. 

The people west of Lake Michigan had long been desir- 
ous of having a territorial government of their own. The 
seat of government of Michigan Territory was at Detroit, 
six hundred miles from the centre of settlement west of the 
lake, and nearly inaccessible therefrom during one-half of 
the year; the laws of Michigan were practically dead-letters 
among them; the civil machinery, this side of the lake, was 
chiefly conspicuous for its absence, and there were com- 
mercial as well as sectional and political jealousies between 
the people on either side of the great inland sea. As early 
as 1824, Judge James Duane Doty had interested Senator 
Thomas H. Benton in a scheme to get a bill through congress 
erecting "the Territory of Chippewau." The bill 1 was drawn 




MICHIGAN, 

JUNE 28, 183*. 



by Judge Doty and forwarded to Senator Beaton in Novem- 
ber of that year, together with a petition for its passage 
signed by the inhabitants of the proposed Territory. It is 
interesting to note the ideas prevalent among them at that 
time concerning the proper limits of what is now Wiscon- 
sin. The boundaries sought by the Doty bill, were: 

City] to the Missouri river; on the southwest and west by the Missouri 
river and the White Earth river, falling into the same; and on the north 
by the northern boundary of the United States, shall be, and nereby is, 
for the purpose of temporary government, attached to and made part of 
the Territory of Michigan." 
1 Doty MSS., in the possession of the Society. 



464 



WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 



" All that part of the Michigan Territory included within 
the following boundaries, that is to say: On the south by the 
northern boundary line of the state of Illinois, crossing 
the Mississippi river at the head of Rock Island, and by the 
northern boundary line of the state of Missouri; on the 
west by the Missouri river; on the north by the boundary 
line of the United States to the southern extremity of 
Drummond's island at the mouth of the river St. Mary, 
and thence by a line running from said island to the south- 
ern extremity of Bois Blanc island in Lake Huron, thence 
by a line equally distant from the island and main land to 
the centre of the straits between Lakes Michigan and 
Huron, and thence up the middle of the said straits and 
Lake Michigan to the northeastern corner of the state of 

Illinois." 

The matter dragged along for some time without action, 
although Judge Doty persistently wrote letters explanatory 
of the situation to numerous influential congressmen. In 
1827, we find the judge willing to call the proposed new 
Territory " Wiskonsin," in honor of its principal river. In 
February, 1828, the committee on territories in the house 
was committed to its favor, but it received a serious set- 
back from a memorial to congress, sent in shortly after by 
the people of Detroit, who strenuously objected to giving up 
to the proposed new territory that portion of their upper 
peninsula which was east of the Mackinaw meridian, 1 with 

which the 
memorialists 
showed they 
were having 
active com- 
mercial rela- 
tions, and to 
which they 
were closely 
allied, socially 
and politically. 
In 1 830, the ef- 



MONTREAL R. 

VIEUXDE6ERT 
EMOMONrc R 




IX. 



WISCONSIN, 

APRIL 20, 7836. 



{ \The Michigan Herald, February, 1838. 



1834.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 465 

fort was renewed by Judge Doty in a bill to establish the 
Territory of Huron, with the same boundaries as those pre- 
scribed for Chippewau. 1 In 1834, after several sessions of 
lobbying, a substitute was offered, entitled "A bill establish- 
ing the territorial government of Wisconsin," with bound- 
aries the same as before, except that the country to the east 
of the Mackinaw meridian was not now claimed, a com- 
mittee of the house of representatives having reported in 
1832 that " the due line north from Mackinaw should be re- 
tained as more in consonance with the ordinance of 1787." " 
The bill hung fire on account of the Ohio Michigan dispute, 
with the result that, as before mentioned, Wisconsin, the 
fifth and last division in the Northwest Territory, was 

1 In Washburne's The Edwards Papers (pp. 439, 440) there is a letter front 
Hooper Warren, editor of The Galena Gazette, to Gov. Ninian Edwards, 
of Illinois, dated Galena, October 6, 1829, in which he thus refers to letters 
written by Judge Doty to that paper, on the boundary question: "I hope 
you have read the numbers of our Green Bay correspondent. He is Judge 
Doty. You are among others to whom he requested us to send the papers 
containing his essays. I want you to answer them. You will see that 
the whole of his arguments respecting Ohio and Indiana do not apply to 
Illinois, as our boundary has the assent of Congress, while that of the 
former states has not. I will further suggest to you that the ordinance 
does not say that the east and west line from the southerly bend of Lake 
Michigan shall be the boundary; but that congress may form one or more 
states north of that line — and would not the southern boundary of the 
state of Wisconsin at 42° 30' be in accordance with that injunction or per- 
mission? Further, Illinois has a natural right to a port on Lake Michigan, 
which the old line would cut her off from. This subject is of more im- 
portance than you may think it is. A large portion, perhaps a majority, 
of the people here, are of Judge Doty's opinion, and are wishing and ex- 
pecting the old line to be established. I have been informed that Judge D. 
has said that should a case of jurisdiction come before him, he would 
decide against us. The contention in Michigan proper is for ten miles 
only, which Ohio and Indiana have got north of the 'east and west line.'" 

See Wis. Hist. Colls., x., pp. 236, 237, for instance of confusion existing, 
at this time, as to the location of the Wisconsin-Illinois boundary — the 
election commissioners of Jo Daviess county, Illinois, opening a poll at 
Platteville, Wisconsin. E. B. Washburne says, in connection with this 
fact: " The boundary line between Illinois and Michigan Territory war 
not officially defined until 1830." — Ed. 

- Governor Doty's message, December 4, 1843. 
30 



46G 



WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XL 



stripped of the upper peninsula altogether. The land line 
decided upon, between Wisconsin and Michigan — connect- 
ing the Montreal and Menomonee rivers — appears to have 
been the suggestion, in 1834, of Senator Preston of South 
Carolina. 1 An old map of Wisconsin, then in vogue, erro- 
neously showed a continuous water-course between those two 
points, thus making an island of the northern peninsula. 

April 20, 1836, the bill establishing the new Territory was 
approved, Wisconsin being therein assigned these limits: 
"Bounded on the east by a line drawn from the northeast 
corner of the state of Illinois, through the middle of Lake 
Michigan, to a point in the middle of said lake and opposite 
the main channel of Green bay, and through said channel 
and Green bay to the mouth of the Menomonee river; thence 
through the middle of the main channel of said river to 
that head of said river nearest to the Lake of the Desert; 
thence in a direct line to the middle of said lake; thence 
through the middle of the main channel of the Montreal river 
to its mouth; thence with a direct line across Lake Supe- 
rior to where the territorial line of the United States last 

touches said lake 
northwest; thence 
on the north with 
the said territorial 
line to the White 
Earth river; on the. 
west by a line from 
the said boundary 
line following down 
the middle of the 
main channel of 
White Earth river 
to the Missouri river, 
and down the mid- 
dle of the main 
channel of the Missouri river to a point due west from the 
northwest corner of the state of Missouri; and on the south, 
from said point, due east to the northeast corner of the state 




1 Wis. Hist. Colls,, iv., p. 352. 



1838.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 467 

of Missouri; and thence with the boundaries of the states of 
Missouri and Illinois, as already fixed by acts of congress." 

It was Hobson's choice, with both Wisconsin and Michi- 
gan. Congress assumed the right to govern and divide the 
territory in the Northwest to suit itself, regardless of the 
solemn compact of 1787, and there seemed nothing to do but 
submit. The future proved that Michigan had been given 
more than an equivalent in the great northern peninsula, 
for the narrow belt of country along the Ohio border, and 
had no reason to grumble, while Wisconsin lost in the 
transaction a tract of territory which belongs to her geo- 
graphically, and which had always been designed for her 
in the preliminary deliberations concerning the political 
division of the Northwest. But while the consent of Michi- 
gan had been formally asked and reluctantly given to this 
violation of the great ordinance, that of Wisconsin was 
never sought for, either as to her northeastern or southern 
boundary. 

By act of June 12, 1838, congress still further contracted 
the limits of Wisconsin by creating from its trans-Missis- 
sippi tract ' the Territory of Iowa. This, however, was in 
accordance with the original design when the country be- 
yond the Mississippi was attached to Michigan Territory 
for purposes of temporary government, so no objection 
was entertained to this arrangement on the part of Wiscon- 
sin. The establishment of Iowa had reduced Wisconsin to 
her present limits, except that she still held, as her western 

1 The language of the clause is as follows: " All that part of the present 
Territory of Wisconsin which lies west of the Mississippi river and west 
of the line drawn due north from the headwaters or sources of the Missis- 
sippi to the territorial line" [international boundary]. By a memorial to 
congress of the Wisconsin Territorial legislature, approved January' 14, 
1841 (Senate Docs., No. 171, 2Gth Cong., 2d sess., vol. iv.), it will be seen that 
under this act of June 12, 1838, there was some ambiguity as to the west- 
ern boundary description; the Wisconsin memorialists held that "the ef- 
fect of the act confined the western boundarydine of Wiskonsin to the 
edge of the waters of the Mississippi river, and took away the jurisdiction 
of Wiskonsin over any part or portion of the Mississippi, either concurrent 
or otherwise." Congress finally changed the phraseology, so that Wis- 
consin's western boundary became " the center of the main channel of 
that river." 



468 



WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 



boundary, the Mississippi river to its source, and a line 
drawn due north therefrom to the international boundary. 
In this condition Wisconsin remained until the act of 
congress approved August G, 1846, enabling her people to 
form a state constitution. Settlements had now been estab- 
lished along the upper Mississippi and in the St. Oroix val- 
ley, far removed from, and having neither social nor com- 
mercial interests in common with, the bulk of settlement in 
southern and eastern Wisconsin. The northwestern set- 
tlers did not wish to be permanently connected with Wis- 
consin, but did desire to cast their fortunes with a new 
Territory, to be called Minnesota, which was to be formed 
west of the Mississippi. They therefore brought strong in- 
fluences to bear in congress, and the enabling act in question 
gave to Wisconsin practically the same northwestern line 
that she has to-day — from the first rapids of the St. Louis 
river due south to the Sfc. Croix river and thence to the Mis- 
sissippi. This cut off an area of twenty-six thousand square 
miles, with the city of St. Paul included, from the Badger 
commonwealth and assigned it to Minnesota. There was a 
sharp fight over the matter, both in congress and in the 
Wisconsin constitutional conventions of 1S46 and 1847-48, 
with the result that the St. Croix people won, and Wiscon- 
sin was admitted into the Union, by act approved May 29, 

1848, with 
her present 
limits: shorn 
on the south 
by Illinois, 
on the north- 
e a s t by 
Michigan 
and on the 
n o r t h w est 
by M i n n e- 



X. or r« WOODS 



MACKINAW 




DARY DISPUTES 



In 18 3 7, 
Wise o n s i n 
Territory had a diplomatic flurry with Missouri regarding 



sota. 



1837-44.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 460 

the southern bounds of her trans-Mississippi tract, 1 but as 
that country was merely attached to Wisconsin for tempo- 
rary purposes and was afterwards absorbed by Iowa, the 
particulars of the dispute are not now pertinent. Neither 
is the animated disturbance created by the "Wisconsin legis- 
lature in 1843-44* over the terms of the international bound- 
ary treaty of 1842, of importance at this day; for the strip of 
country northwest of Lake Superior, which Wisconsin 
claimed had been wrongfully encroached upon to the extent 
of ten thousand square miles by Great Britain, became the 
property of Minnesota, who fell heir to the international dis- 
pute when Wisconsin became a state. 

We will now, at the risk of occasional repetition of facts 
already stated in this introduction, follow the fortunes, in 
some detail, of the northeastern, northwestern and southern 
boundaries of the Badger state, each of which has an inter- 
esting and instructive history. 



THE NORTHEASTERN BOUNDARY. 

The upper peninsula of Michigan is three hundred and 
eighteen miles in length from east to west, and varies from 
thirty to one hundred and sixty-four miles in width from 
north to south. In its rugged hills to the north and west 
there are practically inexhaustible stores of copper and iron, 
while in the eastern counties agriculture is successfully 
carried on; it commands the straits of Mackinaw and the 
outlets of Lakes Superior and Michigan, while numerous 
harbors line its coasts, and the fisheries off its shores are a 
never-failing source of revenue. As early as liJGO the 
Jesuits discovered copper mines upon its northwest coast, 
and established the fact that the natives had long before had 
workings there. In 1771 an English mining company es- 
tablished a plant on Ontonagon river, but was unsuccessful, 

'For details, see message of Governor Dodge, November 7, 1837, House 
Jour., Wis. Terr. Legis. 

- For details, see Council Jour., Wis. Terr. Legis., 1843 and 1844. 



470 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

and it was not until 184=5 that the first profitable operations 
were undertaken; while in the same year, iron mines were 
developed in the neighborhood. During the greater period of 
the controversy over the possession of this tract, therefore, 
its value was practically unknown, although frequently 
hinted at. Wisconsin's chief desire appears to have been 
its retention simply as a country rightfully belonging to her, 
with but little foresight of the great extractive industries to 
be developed there; while Michigan appears, at first, to have 
looked upon the greater portion of her acquisition with 
something akin to contempt: Mackinaw and the Sault Ste. 
Marie, however, had so long been in close trading and social 
relationship with Detroit, that the country east of the 
Mackinaw meridian was from the first tenaciously clung to. 

At a meeting of the citizens of Detroit, held on the 18th 
of February, 1828, a memorial to congress was adopted, 
protesting against that clause in the Doty bill for erecting 
the territory of Chippewau — the measure had been favor- 
ably reported by the house committee on territories — 
which included in the boundaries of the proposed territory 
the whole of the northern peninsula. The memorial con- 
tained this sentence: 

"The views of your memorialists as to the proper bound- 
aries of the Territory of Michigan have already been ap- 
proved and sanctioned by the congress of the Union. By an 
act, entitled 'An act to divide the Indiana Territory into two 
separate governments,' approved January 11, 1805, a line 
drawn from the southerly bend of Lake Michigan, through 
the middle of said lake, to its northern extremity, and 
thence due north to the northern boundary of the United 
States, was fixed as the western boundary of the Michigan 
Territory. This your memorialists consider the correct 
boundary, as designated by the geographical aspect and 
commercial relations of the country." 

In 1830 the Chippewau bill had, after varied experiences 
in congress, developed into a bill for the establishment of 
the Territory of Huron, with the entire northern peninsula 
still included in its prescribed boundaries, the house com- 
mittee on territories having each year favored such limits 



1831-34.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 471 

on geographical considerations alone. This brought out 
from Governor Cass of Michigan, an expostulatory message 
to his territorial council, dated January 5, 1831, in which 
he said: 

" If we have any security for the political privileges we en- 
joy or expect to enjoy, we have the same security, and that 
is, the faith of the United States, for the integrity of the 
territorial boundaries established by that act [ordinance of 
1787]. A line drawn through the middle of Lake Michigan 
to its northern extreme, and thence due north to Lake 
Superior, is our western boundary. * * * To the country 
west of that line we have no claim." 

In 1832 the house committee on territories reported in 
favor of naming the proposed Territory Wiskonsin, and of 
changing its northeast boundary line to the Mackinaw 
meridian, "the retention of which is more in consonance 
with the ordinance of 1787." 

On the 7th of January, 1833, the legislative council of 
Michigan addressed a memorial to congress, insisting on 
the right of that Territory to the Mackinaw line, as recom- 
mended by the committee. 

The Michigan council adopted another memorial to con- 
gress, December 12, 1831, formally praying for the erection 
of the Territory of Wisconsin out of that portion of Michi- 
gan Territory " lying west of a line drawn through the mid- 
dle of Lake Michigan to the northern extremity [Mackinaw] 
and thence north to the boundary line of the United 
States. - ' ' 

December 11, 1834, a bill to establish the northern bound- 
ary of Ohio was referred to the judiciary committee of the 
United States senate, of which William C. Preston of South 
Carolina was a member. Both Ohio and Michigan being 
represented before the committee by counsel, elaborate 
arguments were made on the proper interpretation of the 
fifth article of the ordinance of 1787, particularly as to the 

1 The memorialists estimated that in the country between the Mississippi 
and Missouri rivers there were, at that time, from five thousand to eight 
thousand souls, and that in the country between Lako Michi gan and the 
Mississippi there were from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand souls. 



472 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

clause establishing a line running due east and west from 
the southern bend of Lake Michigan, as the southern 
boundary of the fourth and fifth states to be formed out of 
the Northwest Territory. It was incidentally argued that 
as Michigan was to be the fourth state to be thus erected, 
the fifth state, Wisconsin, when it came to be established, 
should embrace all that portion of Michigan Territory lying 
west of the meridian of Mackinaw and the middle of Lake 
Michigan. 1 At the conclusion of the argument, Mr. Preston 
asked how much territory lay west of Lake Michigan. 
The reply was, that there was probably one hundred thou- 
sand square miles, although it had not yet been surveyed. 
Mr. Preston expressed the opinion that this was altogether 
too large a tract for one state, and produced a map which 
was similar to one drawn by L. Judson, and in 1838 pub 
lished "by order of the legislative assembly of Wiskonsin." 
This map was supposed to be the most accurate extant, but 
it erred greatly in many important particulars. It repre- 
sented the Montreal and Menomonee rivers as meeting in 
Lake Vieux Desert, thus making an island out of the north- 
ern peninsula. Mr. Preston now drew a finger along this 
alleged river highway between Green bay and Lake Su- 
perior and remarked that he "thought that would be a fair 
division of the country." 

Delegate Lucius Lyon of Michigan protested against 
this, saying that his people " did not wish to so extend their 
state; that for a great part of the year nature had separated 
the upper and lower peninsulas by impassable barriers, and 
that there could never be any identity of interest or com- 
munity of feeling between them." 2 

The view taken by Senator Preston, however, appears to 
have been regarded by a majority of his fellow committee- 
men as a sound one. At all events, it was just then very desir- 
able, politically, to conciliate Ohio and yet keep good friends 
with Michigan, who would soon become a member of the 
Union. So the territorial claims of Ohio were favorably 
reported upon by the committee, and it was informally 

1 Wis. Hist. Colls., iv., p. 352. 
Ud.. p. 353. 



1836.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 473 

agreed among the members that Michigan should have the 
northern peninsula. To be sure, Michigan did not want it, 
but it was prophesied that she would eventually be satisfied 
with the enforced exchange. 

The same Ohio boundary bill came again before the 
senate judiciary committee, the following session; for 
though the senate had passed it the previous year, the house 
had not acted. On the 1st of March, 1836, the committee 
once more reported in favor of Ohio, Mr. Preston having 
reiterated his views regarding the Michigan-Wisconsin 
boundary line. The committee, in its report, after disposing 
of the question actually before it, went outside of its topic 
and submitted this suggestion to the senate: ' 

" If Michigan be not sufficiently large, it is easy to remedy 
that objection; and if the ordinance [of 1787] is to remain 
unchanged — as it must, unless the state of Virginia will 
consent to an alteration of it — so immense a tract of 
country as Wisconsin presents ought not to be formed into a 
single state. Whatever disadvantage may arise from con- 
necting with Michigan a portion of country west or north 
of the lake, is, we think, not to be weighed with the incon- 
venience of subjecting, forever after, to the jurisdiction of a 
single state, all the inhabitants who may reside in the region 
west and north of the lake." 

About this time the state constitution adopted by the 
people of Michigan in 1835 was, together with a message 
from the president on the Ohio-Michigan boundary dispute, 
referred to a select senate committee, of which Thomas H. 
Benton was chairman and John M. Clayton, chairman of the 
judiciary committee, a member. This committee reported 
March 22, 183G, a bill to establish the northern boundary of 
Ohio as Ohio wanted it, and also a bill to erect Wisconsin 
Territory. This latter measure laid down the northeast 
boundary line of the new Territory as Mr. Preston had sug- 
gested and practically as it exists to-day. 

When the Wisconsin bill was before the house, in com- 
mittee of the whole, Elias Howell of Ohio offered an amend- 

'Senate Docs., No. 211, 24th Cong., 1st Bess., vol. iii. ; also Reports Of 
Corns., No. 380, vol. ii., 1835-36. 



4:74 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XL 

ment to make the Wisconsin-Michigan boundary a line 
running "from the middle of Green bay to the head of 
Chocolate river, thence down said river to Lake Superior, 
thence due north to the territorial line." Had this amend- 
ment been adopted, Wisconsin would have gained the 
greater part of the upper peninsula. But it was defeated, 
and the senate bill left intact, the act being approved as it 
came from committee, April 20, 1830. 

The charge was freely made at the time that the northern 
peninsula was given to Michigan as a compensation for the 
loss on her southern border. But Senator (afterwards Pres- 
ident) James Buchanan, a member of the senate judiciary 
committee, made a speech J in which he vehemently denied 
that Michigan had favored this barter, and claimed that it 
was made "solely upon considerations of public policy." 
He pointed out that the legislature of Michigan thus expos- 
tulated with the senate committee: 

"Its limits [those of Michigan] are fixed and immutable, 
without the consent of the people. They have never claimed 
anything beyond those limits; they have never transcended 
them; they have, in all their proceedings, adhered to them 
with punctilious fidelity. A due regard, to the ' natural 
boundaries' and to the rights, political and territorial, of 
another people, whom she hopes at an early day to hail as 
another accession to this great confederacy of states, would 
forbid her to accept any acquisition of territory north and 
west of her, as a consideration for the serious loss alluded to." 

To be sure, it was not a bargain. We have ample evi- 
dence of that, in the repeated official protests of Michigan 
at this unwarranted disposition of territory. But the pol- 
iticians in congress were right when they predicted that 
Michigan would ultimately become more than reconciled to 
the transfer and tenaciously cling to her Lake Superior 
country as perhaps her richest possession. Though not a 
bargain, it was a magnificent recompense. 2 

1 Appendix to Cong. Globe, 24th Cong., 1st sess., p. 308. 

" Michigan appears to have been well rewarded for her few lost town- 
ships on the Ohio border. She obtained, in addition to the northern 
peninsula, "land for the erection of her public buildings; all the salt 



1838-40.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 475 

By act of congress approved June 12, 1838, the surveyor- 
general of the United States was required to cause the 
boundary between Wisconsin and Michigan to be " surveyed, 
marked and designated," and the sum of $3,000 was appro- 
priated for the purpose. Commissioner Whitcomb of the 
general land office deeming the appropriation insufficient, 
nothing was done under this act. July 20, 1840, congress 
re-appropriated the sum, and gave the work in charge of 
the secretary of war. Captain Thomas Jefferson Cram, of 
the topographical engineers, was assigned the task, and in 
spite of the short season remaining to him after the passage 
of the act, made considerable progress in penetrating the 
absolute wilderness through which much of the boundary 
ran. Captain Cram made his report to the topographical 
bureau in December, 18 10. ' His reconnoisance was chiefly 
of the wild country between the headwaters of the Montreal 
and Menomonee rivers. 

It will be remembered that the act erecting Wiscon- 
sin Territory thus described the northeast boundary: 
" Through the middle of Lake Michigan to a point in the 
middle of said lake and opposite the main channel of Green 
bay, and through said channel and Green bay to the mouth 
of the Menomonie river; thence through the middle of the 
main channel of said river to that head of said river nearest 
to the Lake of the Desert; thence in a direct line to the 
middle of said lake; thence through the middle of the main 
channel of Montreal river to its mouth; thence with a direct 
line across Lake Superior to where the territorial line of the 
United States last touches said lake northwest." 

Capt. Cram points out in his report that, from a reading 
of this description, it would be inferred: 

" 1st. That the Lake of the Desert was supposed to be a 
headwater of, and to discharge itself into, Montreal river. 

springs in the state, with six sections of land contiguous to each, in addi- 
tion to the school and university lands, and five per cent, of the net pro- 
ceeds of the sales of all public lands in the state — and also by giving to 
her $382,335.31 of the money required by the act of June 23, 1836, to be 
deposited with the states." — See appendix to Council Jour., Wis, Terr. 
Legis., 1844, p. 9. 

1 Senate Docs., No. 151, 26th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. iv. 



476 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

"2d. That somewhere between Lake Superior and Green 
bay there was a known lake bearing the name of the ' Lake 
of the Desert.' 

"3d. That all of the headwaters discharging themselves 
into the Menomonee river, one would be found nearer the 
said Lake of the Desert than any other. 

" 4th. That the nearest head of the Menomonee to the said 
lake would be found to be a branch of the Menomonee, and 
not a lake." 

But it was ascertained by the survey that Lac Vieux 
Desert, wrongfully called Lake of the Desert, 1 is really the 
headwater of the Wisconsin river, and has no connection 
whatever either with the Menomonee or Montreal rivers; 
not even being in a line between their headwaters, but to a 
considerable distance northeast. " The nearest distance 
between the lake and the Montreal river, which takes its 
rise in an extensive swamp, is such that an Indian requires 
eight days, without a pack, to pass from one to the uther. 
The Montreal river was found to have a course different 
from what was supposed; so have the courses of the Me- 
nomonee and of its principal branches been equally mistaken 
and misrepresented." 

Captain Cram concluded that it would be exceedingly dif- 
ficult to run a line between the headwaters of the Montreal 
and Menomonee; utterly impossible, in fact, to exactly fol- 
low the official description. He said that it would involve 
elaborate and expensive surveys to determine " the middle " 

1 Capt. Cram says: "The country in the vicinity of this beautiful lake 
is called, in Chippewa language, Katakittekon, and the lake bears the 
same name. On South island there is an old [Indian] potato-planting 
ground; hence the appellation of 'Vieux Desert,' which, in mongrel 
French, means ' old planting-ground.' There is more reason for calling it 
' Lac Vieux Desert,' than for tha appellation 'Lake of the Desert.' It is 
much to be regretted that the Indian names of rivers, lakes and places 
are so frequently changed without any reason, and in most cases for the 
woi^e." Both this report and that of the following year abound iu ex- 
celled descriptions of the wilderness and its inhabitants. 

On a map drawn by James Daane Doty in 1830, to accompany a report 
on northern Wisconsin made to Governor Lewis Cass, Lake Vieux Desert 
is styled " Old Plantation lake."— (Wis. Hist. Colls., vii., p. 204 ) 



1840.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. '477 

of so crooked a lake as the Yieux Desert; he also pointed 
out that both the Montreal and Menomonee are filled with 
islands, many of them of great size, while in both rivers there 
are numerous channels of equal capacity, and suggested 
that the official description be so changed as to give one- 
half of these islands to Michigan and the rest to Wisconsin, 
to specify a particular channel in each of the rivers, and 
also to establish some point in the lake that could be easily 
determined — for instance, the highest point of Middle 
island; he likewise suggested that some particular channel 
in Green bay should be named — for, owing to the islands 
in that body of water, there are several ship channels, none 
of which can be properly designated as "the most usual." 
In short, he made it clear that a more specific description 
was essential, or there might be never-ending contention 
over the matter. While asking for a sufficient appropria- 
tion to properly complete his work the following season, 
Captain Cram recommended that the description of the 
boundary be amended so as to read as follows, the object 
being to equitably divide the islands and to allow of a line 
that "could be run without any material difficulty:" 

"To the mouth of Montreal river (of Lake Superior); thence 
(in ascending) through the center of the extreme right-hand 
channel that the said Montreal river may be found to have, 
as far up the same as where the said channel shall be 
found to be intersected by a direct line drawn from the 
highest point of ground on Middle island of Lake Vieux 
Desert north, degrees west; thence (from the said inter- 
section), along the just-described direct line, to the said point 
of Middle island; thence (from the said point of Middle 
island) in a direct line to the center of the channel of the 
outlet of Lac Brule; 1 thence following the center of the ex- 
treme left-hand channel of Brule river (Wesacotasepe) down 
to the middle of the channel of the Menomonee river; thence 
following the center of the extreme right-hand channel of 
the Menomonee river, down the same, to the head of Pemene 
falls; thence following the center of the extreme left-hand 

1 The headwater of the Bruit- river, which is " that head of the Menomo- 
nee river nearest to the Lake of the Desert." 



478 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

channel of the Menomonee river, down to the center of the 
best ship-channel of the Green bay of Lake Michigan; thence 
following the center of the best ship- channel of Green bay, 
to the middle of Lake Michigan." 

In March, 1841, another reconnoissance was ordered by 
congress, 1 and Captain Cram was sent out to complete his 
task, which he did amid great hardships, his exploration 
lasting four months." On the 24th of January, 1842, the 
senate made a request for his report, which was made 
to the topographical bureau February 10. 3 He showed 
that there did " not exist in nature any continuous natural 
boundary — as had been supposed in the act of congress 
defining this boundary — between the headwaters of the 
Menomonee and Montreal rivers;" as for Lake Vieux Desert, 
it was found to be many miles northeast of a direct line 
drawn between the headwaters of the two rivers, so that the 
lake would have to be made the apex of an obtuse angle, if 
it were persisted in as a point in the boundary; he therefore 
argued strongly in favor of a straight line between Lake 
Brule (the head proper of the Menomonee) and the head of 
the Montreal. This straight line, he said, would be sixty 
miles in length, while the indirect line, by way of Lake 
Vieux Desert, would be 100 miles and 2,199 feet. The report 
was accompanied by an excellent detailed map of the 
survey, which is still recognized as official authority. 4 

On the lGth of February, 1842, six days after the sub- 
mission of Captain Cram's second report, but before it had 
been received by congress, Governor Doty sent in a message 
to the legislative assembly of " Wiskonsan " Territory, 5 upon 
the boundary line in question. He said: 

1 As the result of a joint resolution of the Michigan legislature, making 
a request therefor, approved February 2, 1841.— {Senate Docs., No. 186, 
26th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. iv.) 

2 Wis. Hist. Colls., iv., p. 193. 

3 Senate Docs., No. 170, 27th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. iii. 

4 For strictures en Captain Cram's work, see 117s. Hist. Colls., iv., 
pp. 360-363. 

6 Governor Doty endeavored, long and hard, to secure the adoption of 
this ungainly orthography. The message will be found in House Docs. 



1842-43.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 479 

" It is ascertained that a part of the western boundary cf 
the state of Michigan, as prescribed by the act of congress 
of the loth of June, 1836, is an impracticable line, there 
being no natural boundary as therein described. The Lake 
of the Desert does not discharge its waters into the Montreal 
river. It having, therefore, become necessary to designate 
a new line, I avail myself of the occasion to present the 
subject to the notice of the assembly, that such measures as 
are proper may be adopted to procure the recognition by the 
government of the United States of the boundary which was 
established between Michigan and Wiskonsan in the year 
1805. * * * It is manifest from the provisions of the 
ordinance [of 1787] that they [the people on the north- 
ern peninsula living west of the Mackinaw meridian] be- 
long to the fifth state to be formed in the Northwest Territory, 
and that Michigan, as a ' state ' in the Union, has no juris- 
diction over them. This was the doctrine of Michigan until 
she was admitted, and I think it was correct." 

The governor's message was referred to the committee on 
territorial affairs, which reported resolutions in accordance 
with the position therein maintained, and the territorial 
delegate, Henry Dodge, was requested to use his influence 
in the reestablishment of the original boundary. The reso- 
lutions were promptly adopted, though Mr. Dodge appears to 
have been unable to accomplish anything in the matter, at 
that session. But Governor Doty returned to the charge, 
and in his message of December 4, 1843, again awakened the 
attention of the legislature to the subject, and in plain 
terms " demanded " that " the birthright of the state " should 
be at once vouchsafed her by congress. The message was 
referred to a select council committee, of which Moses 
M. Strong was chairman, and Messrs. David Newland and 
Edward V. Whiton (afterwards chief- justice) were lay mem- 
bers. The committee — which had been instructed to report 
" whether the boundaries for the fifth state, by the ordinance 
of 17S7, have been infringed by the government of the United 

No. 147, 27th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. iii. It was transmitted to congress by 
resolution of the Wisconsin legislature approved February 18, 1842, and 
received in the house March 19. 



4 SO WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [vOL. XI. 

States and in what manner "— submitted a report on the 18th 
of December.' It found that the boundaries had been in- 
fringed, on many sides, as charged, among the specifica- 
tions being: 

" Second. By the act of June ] 5, 1836, for the admission of 
Michigan into the Union, by which the Montreal and the 
Menomonee rivers are declared to be the northeastern bound- 
ary of Wisconsin.'' 

In reference to this charge the committee asserted, as 
Governor Doty had, that there is not a natural boundary be- 
tween the two rivers. " Such a boundary [as enacted] vio- 
lates, if not the words, at least the spirit and intent of the 
ordinance.'* Further: " If the country [the northern pen- 
insula] should become inhabited, as it now is to some extent, 
and as it is reasonable to suppose it soon will be to a much 
greater, the convenience of its inhabitants would be much 
better consulted by uniting them with Wisconsin than with 
Michigan. Their facilities of intercourse with Wisconsin 
would be much greater, and they would enjoy their civil and 
political rights to a much greater extent by being united 
with a people to whom at all times they would be contigu- 
ous, than by being connected with those from whom all 
communication would be absolutely cut off nearly half the 
year." 

The committee concludes that the northeast boundary is 
still open, as that which congress "attempted to establish 
violates the spirit, intent and fair construction of the ordi- 
nance," and " should not be established as the permanent 
boundary between the two states." The committee, how- 
ever, confesses itself of the opinion that although Michigan 
had the northern peninsula thrust upon her against her 
solemn protests, " it is not in the nature of political commu- 
nities to surrender any rights, especially rights of territory, 
to which any circumstances have given them the color of 
claim, and it is not reasonable to expect that Michigan will 
voluntarily surrender to us any claims she may have to ter- 
ritory west of Lake Michigan derived by virtue of the act 
admitting her to the Union." 

1 Council Jour. , Wis. Terr. Legis., 1814, document D. 



1843.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 4S1 

The committee, provided a way out of the difficulty they 
had raised, by suggesting that congress be importuned to 
compensate Wisconsin, " in some measure," for the loss of 
the upper peninsula, as Michigan had been compensated for 
the loss of the strip on her southern border. The compen- 
sation which the committeemen thought Wisconsin might 
accept, should come in the shape of: (1) The government 
construction of a railroad between Lake Michigan and the 
Mississippi; (2) The improvement of the Fox and Wiscon- 
sin rivers, so as to make a national waterway between the 
great lakes and the great river; (3) The connection, by ca- 
nal, of the Fox and Rock rivers; (4) The construction of 
harbors on the west shore of Lake Michigan, at Southport 
[Kenosha], Racine, Milwaukee, Sauk Harbor, Sheboygan 
and Manitowoc. 

The report of this committee, and the address to congress 
by which it was accompanied, are interesting reading, in 
view of subsequent events. Probably no state ever adopted 
a more belligerent tone towards congress than did Wiscon- 
sin in these singular documents, which read more like ema- 
nations from a South Carolina legislature than the sober 
judgment of a community which was among the foremost, 
in later days, in putting down by force of arms the rebellion 
which was the fruit of the state-rights doctrine carried to 
its logical sequence. The committee, after expressing its 
disposition to believe that congress " would hasten to make 
all the atonement in its power, and that they would guar- 
anty the construction by the general government of the 
improvements before mentioned, or such reasonable equiva< 
lents as might be mutually agreed upon by the general 
government and Wisconsin," adopts this lofty and threat- 
ening strain: 

" Should we be disappointed in these reasonable expecta- 
tions, we shall continue to occupy the same position that we 
do now, with this advantage, that we shall have shown to the 
world that we exhibited to the United States government a 
disposition in the first instance amicably to arrange the dif- 
ficulties in which we are involved by their action, and we 
shall then have but to satisfy civilized communities that we 
3i 



#82 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

are right in our claims and pretensions, to secure their sym- 
pathy and kind feeling, if not kind action: and we could 
then safely entrench ourselves behind the ordinance of 
1787, fortified by the doctrine, well understood in this coun- 
try, that all political communities have the right to govern 
themselves in their own way, within their lawful bounda- 
ries, and take for ourselves and our state the boundaries 
fixed by that ordinance, form our state constitution, which 
should be republican, apply for admission into the Union 
with those boundaries, and if refused, so that we could not 
be a state in the Union, we would be a state oat of the 
Union, and possess, exercise and enjoy all the rights, privi- 
leges and powers of the sovereign, independent state of Wis- 
consin, and if difficulties mu3t ensue, we could appeal with 
confidence to the Great Umpire of nations to adjust them." ' 

The accompanying address to congress is written in the 
same defiant spirit. " The unauthorized action of the general 
government " is sharply alluded to, in what the memorialists 
call " plain and candid " words. " It is confidently hoped that 
congress will guarantee to Wisconsin these improvements 
in return for her loss of border, * * * that thereby all 
cause for controversy between Wisconsin and the sovereign- 
ties on her borders, and with the national government, may 
cease, and she be admitted into the Union with that portion 
of her territory which has not been granted to other powers, 
upon an equal footing with the original states." Then comes 
this warlike sentence: 

"Should congress, however, turn a deaf ear to our claims 
upon their justice or refuse to atone for the wrongs they 
have done us, we ask them, before doing so, to reflect upon 
what they may reasonably imagine will be the conse- 
quences, and to know, as they well may, that Wisconsin will 
never peaceably submit to so gross a violation of her rights, 
and that, after she has done all to obtain a peaceable redress 
of her wrongs which reason demands, and shall have failed, 
she will resort to every other means in h°- power to pro- 
tect and preserve her rights, and that she will never lose 

The italics are those of the original. 



1S16.] THE BOUNDARIES OP WISCONSIN. 483 

sight of the principle that, whatever may be the sacrifice, 

THE INTEGRITY OP HER BOUNDARIES MUST BE OBSERVED." 

The report closes with a " call " on congress to " do justice, 
while yet it is not too late, to a people who have hitherto 
been weak and unprotected, but who are rapidly rising to 
giant greatness, and who, at no distant day, will show to 
the world that they lack neither the disposition nor the 
ability to protect themselves." 

The address seems, very naturally, to have created no 
small disturbance in the territorial legislature, and some 
rather bitter speeches were made both in its advocacy and 
its denunciation; while proffered amendments fairly show- 
ered in, the most significant coming from Benjamin Hunk- 
ins of Milwaukee, who suggested that the bristling docu- 
ment should be entitled: "A declaration of war against 
Great Britain, Illinois, Michigan and the United States." 

Mr. Hunkins appears to have been in earnest over his 
proposed fire- eating amendment, for a few days afterward 
we find him offering still another, to the effect that the me- 
morialists "hereby proclaim to the Union that they will 
never abandon their claim to that part of the state of Mich- 
igan formerly detached from this Territory and annexed to 
that state, but will maintain it to the death! " This amend- 
ment, like all the others, was negatived. 

The address was finally adopted in the house, January 24, 
1844, after protracted filibustering, by the close vote of four- 
teen to twelve. In the council it was concurred in, three 
days later, without division. On the 18th of March it was 
formally laid before the United States senate. 

It is, perhaps, needless to add that congress paid no atten- 
tion to so belligerent a communication, and Wisconsin, with 
all her war talk, regained none of the territory which 
had been taken from her; nor, until long after, any of the 
internal improvements which she had so imperiously de- 
manded. 

The act of August G, 1846, enabling the people of Wiscon- 
sin to form a state constitution, established the following 
northeast boundary: " Through Lake Michigan, Green bay, 
to the mouth of Menomonee river; thence up the channel of 



484 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

the said river to the Brule river; thence up said last-men- 
tioned river to Lake Brule; thence along the southern shore 
of Lake Brule in a direct line to the center of the channel 
between Middle and South islands, in the Lake of the Desert; 
thence in a direct line to the headwaters of the Montreal 
river, as marked upon the survey made by Captain Cram; 
thence down the main channel of the Montreal river to the 
middle of Lake Superior; thence," etc. 

This description, which is the existing one, while it em- 
bodies some of the suggestions made by Captain Cram, is 
nevertheless faulty in several particulars — it fails to specify 
which channels of the Menomonee, Brule and Montreal riv- 
ers are the ones intended, for there are more than one in each 
river; in all three streams there are numerous islands: in the 
Menomonee alone there being, Captain Cram reports, three 
hundred and eighteen, " of which some are over one mile in 
length and from one-eighth to one-fourth of a mile in 
breadth, and covered with excellent pine.*' Questions of 
state jurisdiction over these islands might readily occur, in 
cases of crime or tax disputes, when the country becomes 
thickly settled. Then again, the " southern shore of Lake 
Brule*' is indefinite, and leaves it in doubt whether Michi- 
gan has jurisdiction over the entire lake to the line of high- 
water on the southern beach, or whether Wisconsin might 
not claim, at least, a narrow strip of water along the shore. 
" Through Green bay " is ambiguous, but probably the courts 
would construe it as meaning through the geographical 
center of the bay. Captain Cram's proposed detail descrip- 
tion would have equitably divided the islands between the 
states and left no room for future legal wrangling over the 
intent of the act. 1 

1 The Michigan constitution, while] aiming to be more explicit, yet is 
sufficiently ambiguous, on account of the specification of the " main chan- 
nel" in the rivers named, and of the "most usual ship channel of the 
Green bay." The Michigan description is as follows: "Thence [from a 
point where the international boundary last touches Lake Superior] in a 
direct line through Lake Superior to the mouth of the Montreal river; 
thence through the middle of the main channel of the said river Montreal 
to the headwaters thereof; thence in a ^direct line to the center of the 



1S46.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 485 

In the constitutional convention held in Madison in 1846, 
it was attempted by some pugnacious members, remember- 
ing the squabble of earlier years, to place a proviso in the 
constitution, to the effect that Wisconsin would enter the 
Union on condition that she was " restored to her ancient 
boundaries." But the effort failed, as did, for some inex- 
plicable reason, the following amendment, offered by John 
Crawford of Milwaukee, seeking to practically adopt Cap- 
tain Cram's suggestions relative to the river islands: " Be it 
further ordained, that to prevent all disputes in reference to 
the jurisdiction of islands in the said Brule and Menominee 
rivers, the line may be so run as to include within the juris- 
diction of Michigan, all the islands in the Brule and Menom- 
inee rivers (to the extent in which said rivers are adopted 
as a boundary) down to and inclusive of Quinisec falls of 
the Menominee; and from thence the line may be so run as 
to include within the jurisdiction of Wisconsin, all the islands 
in the Menominee river, from the falls aforesaid, down to 
the junction of said river with Green bay." 

Finally, the northeast boundary clause was adopted by the 
convention in the language of the enabling act. This con- 
stitution was rejected by the people, for various reasons un- 
connected with the boundary dispute, and a second conven- 
tion was called, which met in the winter of 1847-48. In this 
convention John H. Rountree of Grant county endeavored 
to work in the "ancient boundary" proviso, but without 
success; and the description of the northeast boundary as 
given in the enabling act and in the rejected constitution 
was engrafted upon the new document. This constitution 
was ratified by the people, and Wisconsin entered the Union 
in 1848, with Preston's line separating her from the north- 
ern peninsula of Michigan. 

channel between Middle and South islands, in the Lake of the Desert; 
thence in a direct line to the southern shore of Lake Brule; thence along 
said southern shore and down the river Brule to the main channel of the 
Menominee river; thence down the center of the main channel of the 
same to the center of the most usual ship channel of the Green bay of 
Lake Michigan; thence through the center of the most usual ship channel 
of the said bay to the middle of Lake Michigan; thence," etc. 



4SG WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XL 

THE NORTHWESTERN BOUNDARY. 

The western boundary of the Northwest Territory was the 
Mississippi river. Afterwards, when the trans-Mississippi 
country, westward to the Missouri and the White Earth, 
was added to Michigan Territory and retained by Wisconsin. 
Territory, it was understood that it was merely for purposes 
of temporary government. Wisconsin never laid claim to 
any of this tract, but did insist on having as its western 
limit the Mississippi river to its source, and thence north to 
the international boundary, as prescribed by the ordinance 
of 1787. Had the territorial legislators of 1844 had the 
faintest idea that Wisconsin was to be still further reduced 
by taking from it the tract of country between the St. 
Croix and the upper Mississippi, and attaching the same to 
a new " sovereignty," then unborn, there is no doubt that 
their famous address to congress would have not merely 
breathed threats, but have been a notice of nullification itself. 

It was not until 184G that the northwestern boundary ques- 
tion arose. On the 14th of January that year, Morgan 
L. Martin, Wisconsin's delegate in congress, introduced in 
the house a bill to enable his constituents to form a con- 
stitution and a state government. This bill claimed the 
"ancient boundaries." May 11, Stephen A. Douglas of 
Illinois reported, as chairman of the committee on terri- 
tories, an amendatory bill which cut the proposed new state 
down to its present boundaries, the clause relating to the 
northwest limit being: "Through the center of Lake Su- 
perior to the mouth of the St. Louis river; thence up the 
main channel of the said river to the first rapids in the 
same, above the Indian village according to Nicollet's map; ' 
thence due south to the main branch of the river St. Croix; 
thence down the main channel of said river to the Missis- 
sippi; thence," etc. 

Later, Mr. Martin secured the adoption of this important 
proviso in the substitute bill: "Provided, That the conven- 

1 For the map of and elaborate historical and scientific report on the 
upper Mississippi basin, made by Jean N. Nicollet, see Senate Docs., No. 
237, 26th Cong., 2nd sess. 



IS 16.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 487 

tion which may assemble to form a constitution for said 
state shall be at liberty to adopt such northern and western 
boundaries, in lieu of those herein prescribed, as may be 
deemed expedient, not exceeding, however, the present lim- 
its of the said Territory." 

In this form the bill was passed the 9th of June, but 
on the following day the vote was reconsidered, and an ani- 
mated debate sprung up over the proviso. 1 Mr. Douglas 
explained that his object in introducing the new northwest 
boundary line was, that it would then leave " as much of 
the old Northwest Territory out of Wisconsin as in it, so as 
to form a new state equal to it in size." Allen G. Thurman 
of Ohio said this proviso would enable Wisconsin to form a 
state with sixty-eight thousand square miles, which he 
deemed a preposterous size. "We had enough," he said, 
"of the Northwest Territory still left, unenclosed, to form 
two good states; or if it was not quite enough for that pur- 
pose, it would be easy to add a little territory on the west 
bank of the Mississippi;" but this proviso would " enable 
Wisconsin to so cut up the choicest land, to suit herself, that 
there would not be enough left together to form any other 
state." John A. Rockwell of Connecticut thought the 
"assigning to these new states territories disproportionately 
large, would be eminently injurious both to them and to the 
Union at large." Samuel F. Vinton of Ohio said that by 
the treaty with Great Britain of 1783, the western boundary 
of the United States was to commence at the Lake of the 
Woods and run thence by straight line to the source of the 
Mississippi, and then down that river — and such was under- 
stood by those who originally drafted this bill to be the 
present western boundary of Wisconsin; but Nicollet's map, 
which had heretofore been relied on by the house committee 
on territories, fell two degrees short of extending to the 
Lake of the Woods; by comparing the act which created 
the Territory of Wisconsin with Tanner's and Melish's maps, 
he found that "a line drawn from the source of the Missis- 
sippi due north to the latitude of 49° [the boundary of the 
United States] would pass eighty miles west of the Lake of 

1 Cong. Globe, 1846, p. 952. 



488 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XL 

the Woods/ and would include a considerable portion of 
what we purchased in the Territory of Louisiana; so that, 
in any way in which the language of the act could be car- 
ried out, Wisconsin would have for her western boundary a 
line of at least one thousand miles in length;" and Mr. Yin- 
ton thus showed that, "according to the phraseology of the 
proviso, Wisconsin would embrace not only all the residue 
of the old Northwest Territory, but a great deal more." And 
so the proviso was killed. The Douglas bill then passed the 
house, and subsequently the senate, the enabling act being 
approved on the 6th of August following. 

In the constitutional convention which opened in Madi- 
son, October 5, 184G, ex-Governor Doty, who had been so 
prominent in insisting upon the "ancient limits" of Wiscon- 
sin, was made chairman of the committee on boundaries 
and name. The committee very naturally reported an ordi- 
nance insisting on the " birthright " of the proposed state and 
that all boundary questions in dispute should be referred to 
the supreme court of the United States. It soon developed 
in the convention that the people in the St. Croix valley, 
who had settlements at St. Anthony's Falls, Fort Snelling, 
Stillwater and other points, were extremely desirous of cast- 
ing loose from Wisconsin and embarking their fortunes 
with the proposed Territory of Minnesota, beyond the Missis- 
sippi. They claimed that they were far removed from 
southern and eastern Wisconsin, the centers of population 
west of Lake Michigan, and had neither social nor commer- 
cial interests in common with the latter. Of course there was 
political ambition also, at the bottom of this desire, and it 
had been fostered by the proceedings in congress, above re- 
ported. William Holcomb of St. Croix county came down 
to the convention as the representative of this idea, and 
fought for separation with much persistence and parlia- 
mentary skill. The provisions of the enabling act did not 
go far enough to suit him. He sought to have a line 
drawn from the headwaters of the Montreal river to Mount - 

1 The map issued by the general land office at Washington, in 1885, shows 
that Lake Itasca is exactly on the meridian which touches the extreme 
northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods. 



1846.] THE BOUNDARIES OP WISCONSIN. 489 

ain island, 1 on the Mississippi river; the design being, to 
erect the country north of that line and west of the Missis- 
sippi — with the whole of the northern peninsula, if it could 
be obtained — into a state to be called Superior, command- 
ing the southern and western shores of Lake Superior 
with the mouth of Green bay and the foot of Lake Michigan 
to the southeast. It was a bold scheme and had the merit 
of originality. 

His first amendment to the boundary article was as fol- 
lows: "Commencing at the headwaters of the Montreal 
river, as marked by Captain Cram, thence southwest to a 
point a half degree due north to the highest peak on Mount- 
ain island, on the Mississippi river; thence due south over 
said Mountain island to the center of the channel of the 
Mississippi river." This was voted down, fifty-one to twenty- 
nine. Filibustering ensued; and later, the same day, on 
motion of Mr. Strong of Iowa county an amendment to the 
same effect as Holcomb's was adopted, forty-nine to thirty- 
seven. The next day, however, the vote was reconsidered, 
and, after several calls of the house, the amendment nega- 
tived, sixty-eight to thirty-five. 

After numerous amendments had been defeated, through 
a skirmish lasting some weeks, all of them closely allied in 
phraseology to the original article in the enabling act, Mr. 
Holcomb secured the adoption — ayes forty-nine, nays thirty- 
eight — of the following proviso, which was attached to the 
constitution as it went from the convention: "Provided, 
however, that the following alteration of the aforesaid 
boundary be and hereby is proposed to the congress of the 
United States, as the preference of the state of Wisconsin; 
and if the same shall be assented to and agreed to by the 
congress of the United States, then the same shall be and 
forever remain obligatory on the state of Wisconsin, viz.: 
Leaving the aforesaid boundary line at the first rapids in 
the river St. Louis; thence in a direct line southwardly to a 
point fifteen miles east of the most easterly point in Lake 
St. Croix; thence due south to the main channel of the 
Mississippi river on Lake Pepin; thence down the said main 

1 The Mont Trempealeau of to-day. 



490 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

channel of Lake Pepin and the Mississippi river, as pre- 
scribed in the aforesaid boundary." 

On the :3rd of March, 1S?47, congress passed an act giving 
Wisconsin permission to change her northwestern bound- 
ary in accordance with the above proviso. Bat at an elec- 
tion on the first Tuesday in April the people rejected the 
constitution, and the boundary proposition thus fell to the 
ground with it. Had the constitution been accepted by 
popular vote, nearly the entire basin of the St. Croix river 
with its many thrifty towns and broad, fertile prairies, 
would have been lost to Wisconsin — the boundary sought 
being a continuation southward to the Mississippi, of the 
straight line that now runs only from the St. Louis to the 
St. Croix. 

A second constitutional convention assembled at Madi- 
son on the 15th of December, 1847. Byron Kilbourn of Mil- 
waukee, from the committee on general provisions, re- 
ported, December 23, a boundary article which accepted the 
conditions of the enabling act, but with this proviso: "Pro- 
vided, however, that the following alteration of the afore- 
said boundary be and hereby is proposed to the congress of 
the United States, as the preference of the state of Wiscon- 
sin; and if the same shall be assented and agreed to by the 
congress of the United States, then the same shall be and 
forever remain obligatory on the state of Wisconsin, viz.: 
Leaving the aforesaid boundary line at the foot of the rap- 
ids of the St. Louis river; thence in a direct line, bearing 
southwesterly to the mouth of Rum river, where the same 
empties into the Mississippi river; 1 thence down the main 
channel of the Mississippi river, as prescribed in the afore- 
said boundary." 

This amendment, which was bitterly antagonized by the 
St. Croix-valley people, sought to secure to Wisconsin a 
large tract which embraces the whole of what are now the 
Minnesota counties of Washington and Ramsey, and con- 
siderable portions of Anoka, Isanti, Chisago, Pine and Carl- 
ton, with, of course, what is now the city of St. Paul. 

1 The Rum empties into the Mississippi at Anoka, about twenty-five miles 
up river, from St. Paul. 



1847.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 491 

George W. Brownell of St. Croix occupied the same posi- 
tion in this convention that Mr. Holcomb had in the pre- 
vious body. On the 7th of January he introduced an amend- 
ment which was essentially the same as that for which 
his predecessor originally fought — a straight line from 
the headwaters of the Montreal to a point in the Mis- 
sissippi " a half degree due north of Mountain island." In 
submitting this amendment, Mr. Brownell spoke at length ' 
in its advocacy; he said that his proposal equitably divided 
the territory into two parts, according to the spirit of Mr. 
Douglas's proposition in congress, and " conformed to a nat- 
ural geographical division;" that the people of the proposed 
new state along Lake Superior were severed from the set- 
tled portions of Wisconsin by u a wide, uninteresting and 
unsettled region of country of some one hundred and fifty 
miles, which forms a reasonable barrier to a connection;" 
the settlements on the Black and Chippewa rivers and on 
Lake Superior, he said, were without any civil officers; they 
were distant and neglected. Finally, as a clincher, he rep- 
resented that the region he spoke for was a low and flat 
country, of no particular use to Wisconsin; it was " charac- 
terized for its pine barrens, lakes, tamarack swamps and 
marshes," and " would not pay the expense of surveying, 
for ages to come " — all of which reads strangely at this day, 
with an interval of barely forty years, to one acquainted 
with the development and possibilities of the marvelously 
rich agricultural, manufacturing, lumbering and mining 
regions of northern Wisconsin. Mr. Brownell said the peo- 
ple of that country had different pursuits, interests and feel- 
ings from the body of Wisconsin settlers, and their progress 
would be " greatly hampered by being connected politically 
with a country from which they are separated by nature— cut 
off from communication by immense spaces of wilderness 
between;" this was before the day of railroad facilities, 
which easily conquer such "spaces of wilderness " and cause 
them to resound with the hum of industry and to " blossom 
as the rose." Mr. Brownell won to his side several mem- 

1 Jour. Wis. Const. Conv., 1847-48, p. 241. 



492 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XL 

bers from the south, who were touched by his earnest ap- 
peals and thought Wisconsin would have an abundance of 
land left, after allowing the St. Croix valley to be taken out 
of the state. But the majority were against the project and 
voted down the amendments as fast as Brownell and his 
friends would offer them. Even the proviso of the previous 
convention was promptly defeated, and the Hum-river pro- 
viso finally passed, forty-six to twelve. 

The convention adjourned on the 1st of February, 1848, 
and the constitution was forwarded to congress for ap- 
proval. The boundary proviso which it contained, at once 
raised a storm among the people in the St. Croix valley and 
about Fort Snelling, who wanted to be included in Minne- 
sota. They accordingly united in a memorial to congress 
protesting against the Rum-river proposition, which me- 
morial was presented on the 28 th of March. 1 The petition- 
ers — among whom were H. H. Sibley, Henry M. Rice, 
Franklin Steele, William R. Marshall 2 and others who after- 
wards became prominent in Minnesota affairs — wrote: 

"Your memorialists conceive it to be the intention of 
your honorable bodies so to divide the present Territory of 
Wisconsin as to form two states nearly equal in size, as well 
as other respects. A line drawn due south from Shagwami- 
gan [Chequamegon] bay, on Lake Superior, to the intersec- 
tion of the main Chippeway river, and from thence down 
the middle of said stream to its debouchure into the Missis- 
sippi, would seem to your memorialists a very proper and 
equitable division, which, while it would secure to Wiscon- 
sin a portion of the Lake Superior shore, would also afford 
to Minnesota some countervailing advantages. But if the 
northern line should be changed, as suggested by the con- 
vention, Minnesota would not have a single point on the 
Mississippi below the falls of St. Anthony, which is the 
limit of steam-boat navigation. This alone, to the appre- 
hension of your memorialists, would be a good and sufficient 
reason why the mouth of Rum river should not be the 

1 Neill's Minnesota (ed. 1882), p. 489. 

- See Marshall's reminiscences of this boundary dispute, in Mag. West. 
Hist., vii., pp. 248-200. 



1852.] THE BOUNDARIES OP WISCONSIN. 493 

boundary, as that stream pours its waters into the Missis- 
sippi twenty miles above the falls. Besides this, the Chip- 
peway and St. Croix valleys are closely connected in 
geographical position with the upper Mississippi, while they 
are widely separated from the settled parts of Wisconsin, 
not only by hundreds of miles of mostly waste and barren 
lands, which must remain uncultivated for ages, but equally 
so by a diversity of interests and character in the popula- 
tion." 

Moved by the arguments of these memorialists, and also 
by some active lobbying in Washington, congress declined 
to consent to the Rum-river proviso; and the act of May 29, 
1848, admitting Wisconsin to the Union, recognized only 
such boundaries as were specified in the enabling act of 
1846. 

In 1852 the general government employed George R. 
Stuntz to run and mark the land line from " the first rapids 
in St. Louis river, above the Indian village, according to 
Nicollet's map, thence due south to the main branch of the 
river St. Croix." He performed the task with the aid of 
nine men, between October 20 and November 18. ' The site 
of Nicollet's Indian village is known as Fond du Lac, being 
on the north side of the river St. Louis, and eighteen miles 
from Lake Superior. It is at the point where the waters of 
the lake ordinarily meet, in a narrow bay, those of the river. 
The point of juncture, however, varies with the height of 
the water-level in the lake — in some years and in some 
seasons receding, while advancing in others. When Mr. 
Stuntz arrived, he was assured by the Chippewa chief at 
Fond du Lac that the first rapids of the river were opposite 
a trading warehouse at his village. But the water being 
high, no rapids were visible at this place. Whereupon, the 
surveyor proceeded up stream to a point where he was no 
longer able to propel his canoe with a single paddle, against 
the rushing current. Here, where the river runs due south 
for a few rods, he decided the " first rapids" to be; and on a 
high bluff, a quarter of a mile due south of this, he set his 
first post in the boundary. His plan of establishing the lo- 

1 Wis. Jour, of Ecluc, ii., p. 282. 



494 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XL 

cation of the first rapids was accepted by the topographical 
bureau; and thus Wisconsin gained, by the high water which 
chanced to prevail at the Fond du Lac that October day, 
thirty-six years ago, a ribbon of dense pine forest forty-two 
miles long by about half a mile broad. 



THE SOUTHERN BOUNDARY. 

Article V. of the ordinance of 1787, after providing for the 
eventual erection of three states out of the Northwest Ter- 
ritory, further specified: "That if congress shall hereafter 
find it expedient, they shall have authority to form one or 
two states in that part of the said Territory which lies north 
of an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend 
of Lake Michigan." 

Thus the southern boundaries of Michigan and Wiscon- 
sin, the fourth and fifth states that were to be, were estab- 
lished by the ordinance on this line, — 41° 37' 07.9", according 
to Talcott's survey. This compact was to " forever remain 
unalterable except by common consent." We have shown 
how Michigan was deprived of her birthright, though for a 
compensation and after an enforced consent. It remains 
to be seen how Wisconsin lost a strip of her southern border 
ten times as wide, without compensation and without con- 
sent of the people settled within the limits assigned by the 
ordinance of 1787, and confirmed by the act of 1805, to the 
fifth northwestern state. 

In 1818 Illinois, the third state, applied for entry to the 
Union. The original bill for the purpose, as introduced by 
Nathaniel Tope, the delegate from Illinois, provided for the 
northern boundary prescribed by the ordinance. But, while 
his measure was still pending, he appears to have suddenly 
bethought himself of the advantages of giving to his state 
a share of the lake coast, and proposed an amendment 
making the latitude of 42° 30' its northern limits. This was 
a bold move, for the additional strip of territory sought to 
be thus obtained for Illinois was Gl miles, 19 chains and 13 



1818.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 495 

links in width, embracing: a surface of 8,500 square miles ' 
of exceedingly fertile soil, and numerous river and lake 
ports, many miles of fine water-power, and the sites of Chi- 
cago, Rockford, Freeport, Galena, Oregon, Dixon and nu- 
merous other prosperous cities. 

Mr. Pope, in advocacy of his amendment, said 2 that his 
chief purpose was to gain for the new state a coast on Lake 
Michigan, and lake communication with Indiana, Ohio, 
Pennsylvania and New York, thereby "affording additional 
security to the perpetuity of the Union." Illinois, he said, 
had practical control, along her southern and western bor- 
ders, of the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi rivers, all of 
which flowed south; she was the key to the west; in the 
event of a disruption of the Union, it would be important 
that Illinois should be so balanced as to have no great lean- 
ing to any particular confederacy. If left entirely upon the 
waters of the great southern-flowing rivers, it was plain, 
Judge Pope argued, that "in case of national disruption 
the interest of the state would be to join a southern and 
western confederacy. But if a large portion of it could be 
made dependent upon the commerce and navigation of the 
northern lakes, connected as they were with the eastern 
states, a rival interest would be created, to check the wish 
for a western or southern confederacy. Her interest would 
thus be balanced and her inclination turned to the north." 

1 Appendix to ( 'ouncil Jour., Wis. Terr. Legis., 1844, p, 8. By the terms of 
the treaty at St. Louis, August 24, 1816, between the United States and 
the Ottawas, Chippewas and Pottawatamies, it became necessary to estab- 
lish the point where a line "due west from the southern extremity of 
Lake Michigan" would strike the Mississippi. The line was surveyed by 
John Sullivan in 1818. He erected a monument at its terminus, "on the 
bank of the Mississippi near the head of Rock island." This was said to 
be still visible about the year 1840. In 1833 Captain Talcott, while upon 
the Ohio-Michigan boundary survey, had been instructed, under act of 
July 14, 1882, to "ascertain the point on the Mississippi river which is due 
west from the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan." He established this 
point as being " about seven miles north of the fort on Rock island," and 
erected several monuments there and on the line east of that to the south- 
ern extremity of the lake. 

2 Ford's Hist, of III., p. 22; Davidson and Struve's Hist, of III., p. 295; 
Annals of Congress (1818), ii., p. 1677. 



496 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XL 

The amendment was agreed to in the house, without divis- 
ion, April 4, 1818, and the enabling act approved two weeks 
later. It contained no provision for the obtaining of per- 
mission from the people living north of 42° 30' and west of 
Lake Michigan; whereas the act enabling Indiana to form 
a state constitution, two years before, required the people 
interested to ratify the boundary change; and in later years, 
as we have seen, Michigan's consent was required before 
Ohio's claim could be allowed. 

The act of 183G, erecting Wisconsin Territory, recognized 
the Illinois-Wisconsin border at 42° 30', as in the Illinois 
enabling act of 1818. And there the matter rested until 
the 22nd of December, 1838, when Governor Dodge ap- 
proved a memorial to congress adopted by the territorial 
legislature of Wisconsin, wherein it was represented to con- 
gress that the act of 1818, fixing Illinois's northern boundary, 
came " directly in collision with, and [was] repugnant to, 
the compact entered into by the original states, with people 
and states within this Northwestern Territory," and praying 
that, as a measure of justice, "the southern boundary of 
[Wisconsin] Territory may be so far altered as to include 
all the country lying north of a line drawn due west from 
the southern extreme of Lake Michigan." This memorial 
was presented to the senate January 28, 1839/ and conven- 
iently pigeon-holed by the judiciary committee. 

Wisconsin renewed the attack on the 31st of December, 
1839, when a select council committee of the territorial 
legislature of Wisconsin reported resolutions 3 declaring 
that in the matter of the southern border, the ordinance 
of 1787 had been violated by congress, and that "a large 
and valuable tract of country is now held by the state of 
Illinois, contrary to the manifest right and consent of the 
people of this territory." The resolutions requested that 
on the next general election day, the fourth Monday in 
September, the inhabitants of the territory vote upon the 
question of forming a state constitution, and that the people 
living in the district in northern Illinois, which was claimed 

1 Senate Docs., No. 149, 25th Cong., 3rd sess., vol. iii. 

2 House Jour., Wis. Terr. Legis., 1844, p. 14. 



1840.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 497 

by Wisconsin, be invited upon that day to express their 
opinion on the matter; and, in case a constitutional conven- 
tion should be called, that the people in the disputed tract 
send delegates thereto. These resolutions were adopted by 
the legislature, and on the 13th of January were approved 
by Governor Dodge. 

The passage of these resolutions gave rise to a decided 
uproar among the settlements in Wisconsin and northern 
Illinois. Public meetings were held at Galena, Rockford 
and Belvidere — Illinois towns in the disputed strip — and 
resolutions were adopted, declaring in favor of the Wiscon- 
sin claim. 1 These culminated in a convention at Rockford, 
July 6, in which Jo Daviess, Stephenson, Winnebago, Boone, 

1 It will be seen by Editor Warren's letter to Governor Edwards, ante, 
p. 465, note, that as early as 1829 Judge Doty had worked up a strong popu- 
lar sentiment in northern Illinois, in favor of the Wisconsin claim. May 25, 
1840, there was presented to the United States senate a petition signed by 
sixty-two citizens of Stephenson county, asking that " Wiskonsin " be given 
those " ancient rights secured to them by the ordinance [of 1787] aforesaid," 
by the " repeal of so much of the act for the admission of Illinois as conflicts 
with the ordinance before referred to." — (Senate Docs., No. 225, 26th Cong., 
1st sess. , vol. vi.) On the same day, the senate received the proceedings of a 
meeting "of the citizens of Galena and vicinity," held at Galena, May 7, 
1840. — (Ibid. , Doc. No. 226.) It appears therefrom that a preliminary meet- 
ing had been held at the Galena court-house, February 1, Thomas Melvill 
being appointed chairman of a committee on correspondence, to ascertain 
the views held on the boundary dispute by the people of northern Illinois. 
May 1, another meeting was held, and Charles S. Hempstead was ap- 
pointed to draw up a report, which was laid before the meeting of May 7. 
This report went over the ground quite thoroughly, from a historical point 
of view. The report of the committee on correspondence, also submitted, 
stated that it has been discovered "that an opinion is generally entertained 
by the inhabitants of these portions of the [disputed] district, that the ter- 
ritory in dispute rightfully belongs to Wiskonsin, according to the com- 
pact; that it is for the general welfare to be detached from the former 
[Illinois], and annexed to the latter [Wiskonsin]." The meeting thereupon 
adopted a series of resolutions demanding the admission of Wisconsin to 
the Union, with the territory in dispute, and inviting the people in each 
county in northern Illinois to send delegates to a convention to be held at 
Rockford the first Monday in July following. A committee headed by John 
Stark was ' ' appointed to address a circular letter to all parts of said tract 
of country," advising the endorsement of the Wisconsin claim. 
32 



498 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

McHenry, Ogle, Carroll, Whitesides and Rock Island coun- 
ties were represented. The convention formally declared 
that Wisconsin was entitled to the fourteen northern coun- 
ties of Illinois, as claimed, and the citizens were recom- 
mended to elect delegates to a convention to be held at 
Madison, on the third Monday in November, " for the pur- 
pose of adopting such lawful and constitutional measures 
as may seem to be necessary and proper for the early ad- 
justment of the southern boundary." But in Wisconsin 
Territory itself, popular sentiment seemed generally against 
this movement; and at a public meeting held in Green Bay, 
April 24, 1840, it was voted that the people of that section 
" viewed the resolutions of the legislature with concern and 
regret," and the members thereof were requested to rescind 
thetn. 1 When the returns from the election were canvassed, 
it was found that the vote was light and almost wholly 
against state government. 

During the legislative session of 1841, the question of 
forming a state government was not agitated, while an at- 
tempt to revive the southern boundary question, in the form 
of a memorial to congress, was promptly tabled, sixteen to 
nine, and not revived. 

Mr. Doty became the chief executive in October, 1841. 
During the previous congress he had, as territorial delegate, 
attempted to secure consideration for a bill changing the 
southern boundary of Wisconsin, but was defeated by 
Illinois tactics and could not even get it presented. He was 
extremely enthusiastic in the advocacy of Wisconsin's " an- 
cient limits." His first message to the legislature, Decem- 
ber 10, was outspoken in advocacy of a state govern- 
ment, saying that "if the district of country now under the 
jurisdiction of Illinois should sustain her claim, to be made 
a part of the state of Wisconsin," then there would be one 
hundred thousand people in the territory, whereas the ordi- 
nance of 178? required but sixty thousand for the purpose 
of state formation. 

1 The objection, however, was laid more against the premature attempt 
o form a state government, than against the boundary claim. 



1842.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 499 

In the legislative council the committee on territorial 
affairs reported, February 8, 1842, that Wisconsin surely had 
the right to claim admission, with her southern border on the 
line drawn due west from the southern bend of Lake Michi- 
gan, but expressed some doubt as to the expediency of de- 
manding that right. However, they reported a bill referring 
the question of state government to the people at the next 
election, and a resolution inviting the inhabitants of the dis- 
puted tract to hold an election at the same time on the 
question of uniting with Wisconsin in forming such state 
government. 

D. A. J. Upham of Milwaukee, one of the committee, was of 
a belligerent spirit. In a speech stoutly asserting the right of 
Wisconsin to assume jurisdiction over northern Illinois, he 
said: " Let us maintain that right at all hazards — unite in 
convention, form a state constitution, extend our jurisdic- 
tion over the disputed tract, i: desired by the inhabitants 
there, and then, with legal right and immutable justice on 
our side, the moral and physical force of Illinois, of the 
whole Union, cannot make us retrace our steps." 

In the house, the territorial affairs committee reported 
against any present attempt towards statehood. The legis- 
lature took no action on either report. 

As the result of a meeting of the citizens of Stephenson 
county, Illinois, February 19, an election was actually held 
throughout the disputed tract, on the 5th of March, at 
which, of five hundred and seventy votes cast, all but one 
were in favor of uniting with Wisconsin. June 28, Gov- 
ernor Doty officially informed the governor of Illinois that 
the fourteen northern counties of the latter state were 
within the limits of the fifth of the Northwestern states es- 
tablished by the ordinance of 1787, and not, therefore, within 
the constitutional boundaries of the state of Illinois. He 
told his correspondent that the district in question was one 
over which Illinois was " exercising an accidental and tem- 
porary jurisdiction." The object of Governor Doty, in this 
letter, was to protest against the action of the commissioners 
appointed to locate the lands granted by the United States 
to Illinois, in making their selections chiefly within the Wis- 



500 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. [VOL. XI. 

consin claim. At the general election in August, in Boone 
county, Illinois, the question of attachment to Wisconsin 
came up, with the result that of four hundred and ninety- 
six votes all but one were in the affirmative. 

August 13 Governor Doty issued a proclamation, on his 
own responsibility, calling on all the people within the " an- 
cient limits of Wisconsin," to vote, the fourth Monday in 
September, on the question of forming a state government. 
In the recognized limits of the Territory, however, but a 
small proportion of the inhabitants paid any attention to 
the proclamation, and of those three-fourths were against 
the proposition. 

Not at all abashed by the manner in which his proclama- 
tion had been ignored, the governor again solicited the leg- 
islature to call for a popular vote on the constitution ques- 
tion; with, of course, an invitation to the people of northern 
Illinois to join. But the legislature declined and the gov- 
ernor, again of his own motion, issued another proclama- 
tion — August 23, 1843 — of the same import as that of the pre- 
vious year. Less attention was paid to the matter, however, 
than in 1842, only one-eighth of the citizens caring to record 
their sentiments and nearly all of those voting " nay." 

December 4, 1843, in a message covering all of the bound- 
ary troubles, Governor Doty once more called legislative 
attention to the claim of Wisconsin to the sixty- one-mile- 
wide strip through northern Illinois. The special commit- 
tee to whom the matter was referred found, among other 
things, that congress had, in fixing the northern boundary 
of Illinois at 42° 30', violated the compact of 178?. The re- 
port of the committee on this branch of the subject is elabo- 
rate and convincing. 

The warlike address to congress accompanying the report, 
both of which were adopted, contains this phrase: " Had 
we formed a constitution and state government, and ex- 
tended our jurisdiction over all the territory appropriated by 
the ordinance to the fifth state, though it might have in- 
volved us in a conflict with Illinois * * * no one could 
truly say we had done more than exercise our lawful rights 
in a lawful manner." 



184:6-48.] THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN. 501 

But, as we have already seen, this pugnacious address to 
congress met with no response from that body, and nothing 
more was officially heard of Wisconsin's claim to the four- 
teen northern counties of Illinois until the enabling act of 
1846, which confirmed the line of 42° 30'. In the first state 
constitutional convention which met in October, at Madison, 
there was a strong attempt to secure the introduction of a 
clause in the constitution referring all boundary disputes to 
the supreme court of the United States — Wisconsin to be 
meanwhile admitted with indefinite boundaries. But this 
failed — owing, in part, it is said, to the jealousy entertained 
by Wisconsin politicians of those in northern Illinois, whom 
they did not care to meet in competition for office — and the 
constitution-makers accepted the southern boundary that 
congress had established. In the second constitutional con- 
vention, the same result was harmoniously attained. And 
Wisconsin became a state, in 1848, stripped by the youthful 
greed of her southern neighbor and political maneuvering 
in congress, of 8,500 square miles of the richest and most 
populous territory in the entire Northwest. 1 

1 Since the above article was written I have been in correspondence with 
Prof. John E. Davies of the United States coast and geodetic survey, 
who has spent much time in triangulation work in Wisconsin. In answer 
to a question as to whether the existing boundary posts between Illinois and 
Wisconsin are correctly located, Professor Davies writes: "The hne as 
it is, does not represent the parallel of 42° 30', as the constitution of each 
state prescribes. It zigzags to and fro, having been made by a surveyor's 
compass, apparently in the hands of Mr. Lucius Lyon, United States com- 
missioner. The hne should go further south than it now is — about three- 
fourths of a mile in the western part of Wisconsin, and further north in 
and east of Beloit." 



j.. : ,v -. ,/sff. ... 



